George Zimmerman's questionable verdict makes the art of self-defense more ambiguous: Phillip Morris

George Zimmerman was found not guilty in Seminole County Court in Florida in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. The jury concluded that Zimmerman killed in self-defense.Joe Burbank, Orlando Sentinel via McClatchy-Tribune

Cincinnati Bengal’s linebacker James Harrison, one of the most feared hitters in the NFL, took to Twitter immediately after the George Zimmerman verdict Saturday to offer his thoughts on the jury’s finding.

“I think I’ll go pick a fight and get my (behind) kicked then pull my gun and kill someone and see if I can get away it,” he tweeted.

Despite the recent craziness out of the Boston area in regards to New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, who has been charged with killing a man, I found Harrison’s tweet to be usefully satirical and poignant. At least I hope it was satire.

I thought his Zimmerman tweet went directly to the heart of what the Trayvon Martin and Zimmerman saga has to teach America about itself. And that lesson has less to do with race or race relations, than it has to do with fear, paranoia and a saturated gun state.

The big picture lesson seems to be this:

America is in a very confusing and, perhaps, dangerous state of flux when it comes to determining – and knowing - what constitutes stranger provocation and what constitutes reasonable grounds for justifiable homicide.

The trial and its verdict provide more complex questions than answers. What does it really mean, for instance, to “stand your ground” in Florida or any of the other 19 states that have similar self-defense laws on the books?

Unintended or not, the Zimmerman verdict seems to demonstrate the potential ability for any armed passive aggressor to choreograph a random encounter with nefarious intentions.

The Zimmerman outcome seems to at least countenance the sinister role that mischief can now play in any self-defense claim. That is the behavioral loophole that Harrison was powerfully alluding too.

It’s easy and convenient, of course, to reduce the verdict in this matter to a narrative on race. But that’s far too limited.

What new and useful lessons are there really to be learned about the American justice system, social bias, and the much-explored realities of being young, male, black and stereotyped in the wake of this senseless tragedy?

Not much.

African-American men are still too often profiled primarily by each other, law enforcement, and those who would take the law into their own hands.

Still, I’m not convinced that race was ever a primary issue here. With the Zimmerman precedent now serving as a legal guide to what can constitute defensible behavior, however, the question we all must address is the following: How does a nation awash in guns, paranoia and increasingly liberal laws regarding the permissibility of firearms in public places, practice restraint and prudence?

It’s actually amazing that more encounters similar to the Zimmerman and Martin confrontation don’t occur far more frequently. It’s not from a lack of guns, cultural misunderstandings, transient neighborhoods, historical bias and itchy trigger fingers.

Shortly after the Zimmerman verdict was announced Saturday, I spoke with a close friend, who was practically spitting fire. His anger had nothing to do with the verdict, and everything to do with a road rage incident he had just endured.

After a speeding motorist cut him off at a highway exit, nearly caused him to crash the vehicle in which he and his young son were riding, he caught the offending driver at a traffic light and offered him a fairly blunt opinion.

The driver in the other car swore in return and then yelled something that caused my friend, who has a Carry Concealed Weapons permit, to realize that the encounter was potentially escalating into something even more dangerous.

“What are you going to do, shoot me?” the man screamed, before hitting the accelerator and racing off.

“He only said that because I was black. I think we were both lucky that I had my son with me,” my friend said shaking his head.

But the white motorist never indicated racial animus during the encounter. He was definitely a jerk. But a racist? That was a leap into conjecture.

The anger for both men was real, however. So was the potential danger. They may have both been armed – one was anyway.

And that’s the nebulous place we are post Zimmerman. The evolving definition of stand your ground stands to leave just as many Americans exposed to danger as protected from it.

The art and practice of self-defense just became more ambiguous. Stand your ground laws stand in need of some revisiting.

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